Get yourself from worrier ..to a warrior
LIFE coach Mark Fennell has over 20 years experience helping others progress in their personal and professional life. The mentor has written his first book Break Through, giving solutions for those who feel “stuck” in life. In this extract, he explains how we can get stuck mentally and shows us how to break free.
THERE are three main ways we can get stuck in our thoughts: replaying the past, dwelling on the present and worrying about the future.
If you get trapped worrying or stressing it can result in overthinking things and finding it hard to stop.
Over-thinking is a method of trying to control and protect yourself and your loved ones against potential harm.
I’ve helped countless people break the habit of being stuck in their thoughts. I was once stuck overthinking to the extent that I nearly couldn’t take it anymore.
It nearly destroyed my life during a period of health anxiety, consuming me for almost two years.
I also come from a place of recovery, as I know that there is a way to overcome it.
Lots of things can cause us to get stuck in our heads. Thoughts that cause us a sense of worry, anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, sadness or pain.
The thoughts have stuck in our minds because of what they represent to us.
We have this niggling in the back of our minds, this thought demanding our attention even when we try to distract ourselves.
The reason we struggle to ignore these thoughts is because of how we are reacting to them emotionally.
It’s called ruminating – the repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative thoughts and feelings of distress.
At times you might experience a never-ending cycle of playing out scenarios in your mind, fearing the worst possible outcome.
This phenomenon, often referred to as catastrophic thinking, involves fixating on thoughts that lead to imagining the worst outcomes.
It’s creating problems that don’t exist in reality. Studies show the majority of what we worry about never actually happens. Around 85 per cent of our fears are unfounded.
Here’s the toolbox to stop overthinking:
Step one: process how you feel. Observe yourself. This helps to distance you from the emotional overload.
Take note of your feelings and thoughts. Writing them down can help gain perspective. Don’t ignore how you feel, just don’t sit with it for too long.
Don’t let ruminations just whizz on by in the background. Take the approach of a coach listening to a client.
Step two: fact or fiction. Everything is fiction until it is fact. Remind yourself this is in your mind, it’s not reality.
Step three: how you react – break the cycle by using the three out-comes.
There’s the possibility of the best outcome to your worry, the hopeful outcome and the nothing outcome. It works to change your state and mindset.
Step four: identity of hope Lean on hope. Become the hopeful person you need to be. Look to the past when you survived things that at the time felt overwhelming.
Show yourself you are a survivor. Hope says that even when there is no knowing what gift tomorrow may bring, hope is always a choice.
Encourage yourself in the knowledge that whatever you face, you’ll get through. Be your best, do your best and if things don’t work out, hope will carry you forward. Just don’t give up on you. One day life will eventually come to an end for real.
So why worry about that day when the reality is that you are alive today?
Everyone will fall down, fail at things and make mistakes. If you want to be successful, be prepared to make mistakes. Having hope is your inner voice that says: “This is horrible, but I’ll be okay. Even the worst outcomes don’t mean the end.”
When we catch ourselves overthinking, we need to interrupt our emotional response.
Step five: you are in charge. You decide what happens next.
Fear or anger can try to influence you to do a certain thing or react a certain way. But you still have a choice in what you do.
When an unforeseen problem appears, I say to myself, “There is a way through this, I just need to figure it out”.
■■Mark Fennell’s Break Through is out now, by Gill Books, at €18.99.